She managed to turn, legs trembling as she made the vital manoeuvre which had her facing the door.
‘Where are you going?’
Gentle as the question was, it froze her in terror. ‘H-home,’ she whispered tremulously. ‘I w-want to go h-home.’
Silence. She didn’t move and she was almost sure he didn’t either. Then she heard his heavy sigh. ‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘But I shall take you.’
He began walking towards her, and the closer he got, the more she trembled until she shook in violent spasms that brought the tears back to her eyes. It was stupid, but when his arms came gently around her to draw her back against him she sobbed with relief, turning to bury her face in his shirt-front. ‘I’ve never felt so ashamed of myself!’ she whispered thickly.
‘You and me both, agape mou,’ he murmured grimly. ‘But I think my shame has to be worse than yours right now. Come.’ He shifted until he held her beneath the crook of his arm. ‘You are in no fit state to go home as yet, and my guilty conscience will not let you go like this.’ Gently he led her back along the hall. ‘We will talk, I think,’ he decided. ‘Of things other than ourselves and what we seem to want or not want.’ His dry tone made her smile, and she glanced up to find him smiling ruefully too.
Then their eyes locked. And even as she felt the upward surge of all that awful tension again, she saw him heave in a harsh breath in an effort to control his own feelings.
Sighing, he leaned back heavily against the wall behind him, his grip loosening on her. ‘This is not going to work, is it?’ he sighed. ‘Talking is the last thing we both need to do right now.’
She lowered her face, shaking her tumbled mass of hair. ‘I don’t even know you,’ she whispered helplessly. That seemed to shame her as much as the emotions running wild inside her.
‘Our bodies seem to know each other well enough.’ Reaching out, he threaded gentle fingers through her hair. Her eyes closed, face lifting on a sigh of such helpless pleasure at his touch that he breathed once, fiercely. ‘Upstairs,’ he murmured, ‘I have a bed. A warm and comfortable, very large bed where, with a bit of trust on your side and a lot of control on mine, I think I could manage to salvage some of our self-respect from this night if you would let me.’
Her stomach muscles contracted, sending a flutter of appeal winging out across
her body. ‘Violence is not my way, Jemma,’ he said quietly. ‘What took place here just now was a—a culmination of my bad temper and your angry retaliation to it. But it does not alter the most fundamental reason as to why we are here together like this. We want each other—need would be a better word. Please,’ he murmured huskily, ‘will you let me make love to you as gently and as beautifully as I know how?’
‘No strings attached?’ She heard the words leave her lips in the shape of a surrender, her kiss-swollen mouth twisting wryly as she acknowledged it. ‘No other lovers? No other commitment other than a pledge of loyalty while this thing lasts?’ she quoted his own words back at him drily.
‘Do you want a deeper commitment from me?’ he asked, his expression quite serious.
Jemma thought about it. Thought about the man he was and the power he wielded. She thought about the social circles he moved in and the nice little Greek girl at home somewhere in his own country waiting for him to give in to family pressure and marry well. And she shuddered. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I want nothing more from you than—this...’
She moved into his arms, unable to stay out of them for a moment longer. Their mouths met and her eyes closed over the helpless need radiating from her dark blue irises. Leon came away from the wall, folding her against him as he deepened the kiss.
The anger had gone, lost in the surrendering of the battle. But what replaced it was far, far more intense. With the aid of his kiss he seemed to absorb her into him, her mind, her body, her every sense opening up and closing hungrily around him.
He whispered something, a stunned expletive, it sounded like, though she barely registered it because whatever it was was groaned against her burning mouth and she was more aware of him picking her up and cradling her in his arms then moving, carrying her in a floaty haze up the stairs.
The kiss broke when he lowered her feet to the ground again, and Jemma lifted heavy lids to find herself gazing into eyes flowing with passion. It startled her, the look of fierce arousal, and her mouth parted on a protest—never uttered because he stopped it with a small shake of his head.
‘Trust me,’ he said, brushing his lips across hers. ‘This is no empty seduction. I am as much a slave to this as you are, agape mou.’
A statement he quickly proved when her fingers flexed in an instinctive response against his shoulders and he shuddered, the breath rushing shakily from his lungs.
Taking hold of her hand, he led her across the room—a room, she realised for the first time, that was a bedroom, big and gracious, its green and grey furnishings softly lit by a bedside lamp.
By the big double bed he turned her to face him, eyes still black with need but gentle now as they gravely explored her face. She blushed, feeling shy suddenly and awkward now that he had given her a moment to realise just what they were doing.
‘No,’ he murmured, lifting her chin with softly stroking fingers when she tried to hide her face from him. ‘Passion becomes you, agape mou. Don’t hide it all away from me.’
He lowered his head again, silk lashes brushing tantilisingly against her flushed cheeks as he kissed her nose then each corner of her mouth and ran his fingers in a feather-like caress down her throat and over naked shoulders before sliding them into her hair, pushing the long, thick fall back from her face and making her senses leap as he lowered his head to run his tongue around her exposed ear.
She closed her eyes, preening sensually as the sweetest sensation turned her muscles to liquid. Her fingers curled into the lean, tight flesh at his waist. His tongue slid lower, forcing the breath from her lungs in short, sharp gasps as he licked his way to the other ear to wreak the same havoc there.
Then his mouth closed over hers again, his hands sliding down the sides of her body from breast to hip and back again, sending her arching sensuously towards him as, slowly, he began peeling her dress downwards. It had no zip, was nothing more than a tube of stretch fabric and it went easily, exposing her breasts, high-domed and peaked by two tight buds. His hands explored, probed, excited, then pushed the dress further, over her slender ribcage, her narrow waist and the softly rounded curves of her hips. By the time it fell in a pool around her feet, her arms were curved languidly around his neck, all hint of shyness lost to the pleasure of his touch.
They were kissing so deeply now that she was barely aware of his quick movements as he divested himself of his shirt. It was only as he crushed her against the heat of his naked chest that she realised what he had done. And by then she was revelling in the feel of him, of the hard-packed muscle beneath heated flesh, his skin like stretched satin beneath her fingertips, of the rasping pleasure of chest hair moving against her breast. The scent of him was warm and clean and intoxicatingly musky, sensual, so sensual that it sent her dizzy, dizzy enough to sigh and sway, and groan something helpless in her throat which she didn’t understand but he seemed to do because he turned and, with her still held in his arms, lowered them both on to the cool green cover on the bed.
It was a long night. A beautiful night. Tender and excruciatingly patient, Leon guided her down sweet, sweet paths of sensual pleasure. He taught her with each new intimacy what making love really meant. First of the flesh, bringing her skin alive with the lightest, most tantalising caresses until she seemed to quiver all over with a bright tingling pleasure that had her arching and flexing in movements that were so instinctively sensual that she had no idea what it did to him to feel her like this.
But she thought she’d die a thousand deaths at the confusing rush of feeling she felt when his touch became more intimate.